Tag: commons

While the locals go about their lives, working and/or maintaining their streets and the tourists meander the themed streets of Campo Maior, another group of locals work around the clock, making sure that everybody is safe and emergencies are immediately taken care of – the Voluntary Fire Corps.

Cars, ambulances and jeeps come and go anytime there’s emergency reports. The intense heat is probably the cause of many of them. Some firemen take a break from the sleepless nights and busy days, just outside of the station, shaded from the hot sun. Being sketched was definitely a change in their routine.

Campo Maior is in the mouth of many people in the region. TVs broadcast footage from the busy streets during the festivities side by side with reportages boasting the success of the municipality in the business and social arenas, although some of the locals might have a different opinion on the matter.

Such matters become forgotten during the Festas do Povo, when the town dresses itself up in colorful paper flowers. As a local I met said, doors hide many secrets, and each street decoration theme is a well-kept secret, right until the night of the Enramação. Each street picks a theme and designs all the elements according to that theme. It might be a generic theme, like orange or cherry trees, but some streets choose specific themes, like the street that based its decoration on the movie Frozen.

People who barely know the town get lost very easily during the festivities, because the decorations cover up all landmarks and recognizable orientation points. Only in squares and parks can one hope to catch one’s bearings. Anything above the ground floor is covered by the street’s flower ceilings. These devices build up a lot of the character of the decorated streets, as the sunlight gets filtered by the strings of flowers hung from the structures and the textured shadows project upon the pavement.

The streets forget their official name and temporarily adopt the name of the theme. People identify streets by the flowers, plants or other elements that decorate them. Names like the vineyard street, the tulip street and the pumpkin street take place in the mental map of Campo Maior.

It was still weekend, so the hordes of tourists flocked to see the streets of Campo Maior blossoming with the intricate paper flowers, still fresh from the Enramação. Cameras, smart phones, tablets and selfie sticks of all kinds, colors and shapes – much like their targets – were continuously aimed and shot both at the details of the flowers and the general panorama of each street. Some were aimed at these unfortunate boys who, because coming home late at night and not wanting to disturb their sleeping fellow travellers, decided to sleep in a street bench. Their pictures will probably surf the internet for many more weeks than they will care to remember.

Being called “Festas do Povo“, the people becomes a crucial part of the festivities. Mainly because it’s their labor, skill and art that is being showcased all around the streets. But partly, and a valuable part it is, because they are some of the most generous and welcoming people in the country! While their daily life continues throughout the Festas, they do not hesitate to invite you into their homes and tables, offer you a drink and a bite to eat, and regale you with stories and anecdotes of themselves while taking a genuine interest in who you are and what keeps you going.

So it begins! All the flowers blossomed overnight. It is an overwhelming sight to walk the streets of Campo Maior just a few hours after the Enramação. To think that so much can change in just a few hours, and although we had left the town at 4am, the next day still had so many surprises to show. There’s just so much detail, so much to gaze upon, and all the while, trying to grasp the herculean task of putting it all together, of which the Enramação was just the tiny tip of the iceberg. It is decidedly a sight to be seen, these Festas do Povo de Campo Maior, and a true accomplishment of the townsfolk.

Every few years, Campomaiorenses organize a week-and-a-half long festivity in which they decorate the Alentejo town of Campo Maior with colorful and delicate paper flowers that they had been making for the past few months. ‘Decorating’ here doesn’t mean a couple of flowers here and there, but an integral themed second skin installed on over a hundred streets in the town center. The town shapeshifts overnight in a huge cooperative effort. Then it gets hit hard by wave after wave of tourists!

Notwithstanding the August heat, there were rumors about rain and thunderstorm coming at midnight to ruin all the work that the Campomaiorenses already had done. The grey clouds travelling fast across the sky made the locals fear for their delicate paper flowers. The rain didn’t came though, and by midnight, every street was working at full speed.

The afternoon was blazing hot though. Tourists and residents alike took shelter in the many coffee shops and temporary terraces, drinking cold beer and water. Most natives operated from their garages, where they kept the cold ones. One of them, fully imbued with the spirit of the festivities, welcomed us and gave us several drinks of his own personal produce of wine. The beautiful and simply decorated cathedral was probably the coolest place in town, but only a handful of people took advantage of it. At night, a cool breeze took good care of the sweaty laborers.